


The Failure

by posingasme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Romantic Fluff, Stanford Student Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21635524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/pseuds/posingasme
Summary: If getting good grades is the only thing a guy is good at, and his grades begin to slip, he starts to feel like a failure. It doesn't help that he can't quit staring at his roommate's gorgeous buddy, who doesn't see him when he's in the same room. How can someone as enormous as Sam Winchester feel completely invisible? It's no wonder he's drinking tonight.
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 14
Kudos: 66





	The Failure

When Sam had decided he could handle Stanford pre-law, he had not been drinking tequila. But there was very little else that could explain what the hell he had been thinking. 

"If I fail out, and become a sad drunk, will you come visit me?"

Kevin looked up from his laptop. "If you drop out, can I come?"

"I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to Andy. You're twenty. Too young to buy me tequila."

"So is he!"

Andy grunted at him. "Buy your own tequila, Winchester."

"I'm a dropout and I have no job. How am I supposed to be a sad drunk without you to buy me drinks? Do the math.”

“You do the math. I’m a philosophy major. I’ll be as broke as you, even if I don’t fail out.”

Kevin snorted. “I told you to join the comp sci department. Did you listen?”

“No. And that’s why I’m drinking with the dropout instead of writing code on a Saturday night.”

This time, Kevin gave him a scowl, and got back to work without another comment. 

Andy stole the bottle away from Sam when he tried to drink directly from it. “Hey! Slow down. You’re not failing out of school this weekend.”

Sam sighed. “No. Not till end of semester. I’m gonna miss you guys.”

The eye roll from Andy was impressive. Sam was too drunk to do that just then. He would probably fall over, even though he was sitting already. 

The computer science major sighed heavily. “Sam, you’re not going to fail out. You might not have a four-point-oh, but you’re not-“

“Same thing! Right?”

Kevin shrugged one shoulder. “My mom would say so,” he agreed.

Andy stared at him. “Wait. Your version of failing out of Stanford is not getting an A for every course?”

“Stop saying it!” Sam moaned. “Stop. Kevin, make him stop.”

“Which class are you failing?” Kevin wondered. 

Andy’s face was turning red. “Wait,” he interjected again. “Class? Singular? We’re getting trashed because you’re getting less than an A in one class this semester? Who the hell are you people?”

“I’m your best friend,” Sam reminded him. “So don’t pretend you don’t know how bad I need to get As. In every class.”

“I thought I was your best friend,” Kevin muttered without much interest.

Andy shot him a look. “You’re going to graduate school one day without me. I had to branch out to find another low-life like me.”

“And you chose Sam? Dude, he’s going to be a freaking lawyer.”

“Not if he fails out.”

Sam snatched his bottle back. “Exactly! We’ll live at a motel. I’ll be a-a maintenance man. I can do that. Handy-hand-man stuff.”

His buddy took back the bottle again. “Handy-hand-man, huh? And what do I do?”

“You’ll teach high school to little...little teenage shits, like the failure you are. Kevin can come visit us and stock our fridge with stuff his mom sends him. Give me that bottle!”

The knock on the door made Kevin and Andy startle, but Sam was too drunk and too depressed to be surprised. “What? I’m working in here! Who is it?” Kevin shouted. He stumbled to his feet and shoved Sam’s pile of clothing aside with his foot. “Bad enough I’ve got Larry and Curly in here. I’ve got a program due in five hours, you bastards!”

When the door was thrown open, the man standing on the other side of it stared at Kevin with alarm. “I...thought you wanted my help.”

Sam wasn’t sure when he had fallen over, but he pushed himself to sit as quickly as he could. “Castiel,” he breathed, louder than he meant to.

The young man glanced at him with a frown. “Hello, Sam. Andrew. Did I misunderstand your message, Kevin? I’ve plenty of my own work to do if you don’t need-”

“No!” Sam cried out. “Stay!”

Andy elbowed him in the ribs. “Your gay is showing,” he hissed.

Sam turned to stare at him. 

Kevin shook his head. “No, I do need you. Come look at this. There’s a freaking semicolon out of place or something, and the program is looping.”

“I assume that’s not what you want it to do,” Castiel guessed, as he sat at Kevin’s desk to scroll through his work on the laptop.

“No. It’s meant to-You’ll see.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’ve been at this for hours now. I can’t even read the screen. It’s all blurring, and my headache is just pounding away.”

Castiel turned a kind blue gaze on his friend. “You haven’t eaten, have you?”

“Hot dogs. And vitamins.”

He nodded. “Andrew? Do you mind making Kevin consume something that isn’t made of hooves and nitrates, while I look over his hieroglyphics?”

Andy pushed himself up from the floor. “Yeah, sure. Kev?”

“No, I’m fine. I just gotta push through…”

Castiel shook his head. “Kevin, it will take me awhile to look through all this code to find any potential mistake. You need to step away for twenty minutes. Go to the cafe and get a sandwich. By the time you get back, you’ll feel better, and I’ll have some suggestions for you.”

Kevin sighed heavily. “I guess I could use some more coffee.”

“Andrew-”

“No coffee for the Tran man. I know.” Andy winked at Sam, who was still sitting awkwardly on the floor. He took the tequila bottle and placed it back in the cabinet, and then shuffled Kevin out of the dorm room.

It took Sam several seconds to realize he was now alone with Castiel.

“Are you all right, Sam?” the young man asked, without looking away from Kevin’s screen.

He hurried to push himself to stand. It made him dizzy, and he leaned on his own loft for support until he was certain he wasn’t going to fall or throw up. Then he began cleaning up his laundry. He and Kevin weren’t dirty, but they were definitely messy. And each of them bitched about it once in a while, but since it was a mutual fault, there wasn’t much either of them could really complain about the other. They didn’t have company in the room often, unless they counted Andy, who didn’t count. He was practically the third roommate since he lived with his brother Ansem, whom he hated. Andy didn’t care about the mess so long as he didn’t have to do anything about it himself. But now Castiel was here, and Sam was suddenly very aware of how messy the whole place was.

“Sam?”

He whirled around, and nearly fell. He gave the other man a sheepish smile. “I’m a little drunk,” he admitted. He didn’t know what question he was answering, but that seemed like a valid response to whatever it had been.

Castiel smirked. “I can see that.” 

Not that Castiel ever actually looked at him. Not now, not ever. Sam was the largest object in any room they were ever in, and yet completely invisible to this man. It was like he was some sort of chameleon, one people knew was in the room somewhere, but wasn’t worth looking for. 

Why did he even care so much? It wasn’t as though Castiel was some hot nerd who checked everything off Sam’s list. It wasn’t as though his voice was as deep and gruff as the richest of Sam’s fantasies. It wasn’t like Castiel had a devastating charisma that just pulled Sam toward him, heart-first, only to intimidate him with his incredible intellect when chatting casually about his classes in quantum physics. It wasn’t like the guy’s blue eyes and messy, dark hair and amazing leg muscles teased him relentlessly in the gym on those horrible, beautiful days when they were there at the same time. It wasn’t like he couldn’t breathe properly when the man gave one of those rare little smiles, or when he brushed his fingertips gently along the fabric of his coat, or when he narrowed his eyes and lifted one brow with a triumphant smirk when he had found an elusive mistake in some code…

Oh. 

“Sam, you’re staring at me. Are you all right?”

Warmth drained from Sam’s face. “I’m sorry. I’m...drunk?”

Castiel took a deep breath, and turned at last to look at him. “Are you always drunk?” 

He couldn’t look away from that penetrating stare. “What?”

The man stood, and took a step toward him. “Is that why you stare so often?”

Sam swallowed. “I-I don’t drink much at all. Just nights like this.”

“That doesn’t explain why you stare at me. I’ve taken note, and you don’t seem to do it with other people.”

He gasped in a shallow gulp. “What?” Sam made himself laugh. “When have you ever even noticed me?” Then he frowned. That was not what he had meant to say. Not at all.

Castiel let his head tip to the side slightly. “I...I notice you all the time. Are we not...friends?”

“You’re Kevin’s friend,” he breathed. His brain was doing its best, but he could not bring himself to look away now. “And so am I.”

At last, the blue eyes lowered, and the man shrugged. “Right. I just thought...It’s been a while now since we all started hanging out together. Kevin and Andy, and me...and you.” 

Confusion was fogging his drunken panic. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe his drunken confusion was…His fogging panic was confusing his drunken...

“There are often others, of course. Such is the nature of college socialization. It’s rarely just a few friends at a time. But you’ve usually seemed pleased to see me. Or so I thought.”

Sam was frantic to concentrate. He blinked hard. Why had Andy let him drink so much, then left him alone like this? See if he let the guy live in his motel room one day! “No. Yeah! Always glad to see you. Always...What are we talking about?”

There was the tiny smile now, and it was crushing Sam’s heart, but there was also an inexplicable concern in those blue eyes. “Nothing,” Castiel murmured. “I’ve found the mistake responsible for Kevin’s frustration. He would have found it himself if he weren’t so tired. A bit of punctuation in the script, as he thought. I marked it for him with his notes...Maybe I should just go. He won’t need me now. It’s a brilliant program. It’ll run as he intended it to do now. I should just…” The gaze released Sam at last, and Castiel turned toward the door. 

“Wait. Cas? Did I say something wrong?” The idea that he had somehow hurt the man’s feelings and made him feel unwelcome tightened his chest. 

Castiel shook his head. “You were staring at me,” he insisted. “I didn’t imagine that. But maybe I imagined the motivation for it. You’re well enough that you don’t need someone with you. Andy and Kevin will be back soon.”

Sam’s hand shot out and gripped Castiel’s arm. The hard muscle beneath the coat sleeve might have melted Sam into a puddle another day, but now he just wanted to prevent any bad feeling between them. Leave it to his bumbling to somehow make Castiel feel uncomfortable the one and only time he even noticed Sam was in the room. This was humiliating enough that it wasn’t going to be sufficient to get drunker with Andy and lament his complete lack of social skills. This was bad enough that he was going to have to call Dean, and let big brother talk him off a ledge. Dean could live in the motel room with him. He knew how much of a failure Sam was. It wouldn’t come as a surprise. Dean pretended not to know, but nobody knew him better than his brother did, so nobody knew better than Dean how completely Sam sucked at life. It was why he needed his grades to be perfect. It was the only thing he didn’t completely screw up just by being himself. “Cas, stop. I’m not sure what just happened, but I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Stay. Wait for Kevin. He’ll want to thank you for your help.”

Castiel’s smirk seemed a little sad. “You don’t know Kevin that well then.”

Sam gave a quiet laugh in response. “Okay. Well, he should want to thank you. I’ll thank you for him. And for me. If this means he will stop bitching a few hours earlier than he would have otherwise, I owe you!”

His eyes darted down to watch Castiel lick his pink lips slowly. It was hypnotizing, especially being so close to the man that he had to bend at the neck to look him in the face. “Owe me,” he repeated thoughtfully.

It was probably the tequila. Or maybe the lips he couldn’t make himself stop watching. “Yeah. Owe you. Just let me know when you’d like to cash in.”

“Can I...ask you something? As a means of cashing in, I mean. Will you answer a question?”

That seemed easy enough, his clumsy brain reasoned. “Sure. Anything. Hit me.”

“What are you thinking when you watch me across the room like you do?” 

The words came at him slowly, or he processed them slowly. He frowned. “What am I thinking?”

Castiel, strong, brilliant, sexy nerd Castiel, suddenly seemed unsure of himself. It was completely out of character for him. Sam only even recognized it because it looked so familiar. “Are you...thinking about me at all? Or do I just happen to be where you’re looking?”

Sam remembered the conversation about owing Castiel, though he couldn’t quite remember what for. It was hard to remember anything other than those eyes staring up at him like that. It was no wonder he was going to fail out of Stanford. His mind was a complete blank. But the point was that he owed Castiel, and that meant he had committed to being honest in his answer. “What was the question?”

The physics major gave him a snort. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to know what you were thinking of when you looked at me. But it doesn’t-”

“You mean how good looking you are?”

Castiel’s mouth snapped closed, and he swallowed. 

“Is that what you mean? When I look at you, am I thinking of how good you look? Yeah. Usually. Sometimes I think about how smart you are, but that’s usually while I’m thinking of how good you…” What was he babbling about now?

That tiny smile spread onto Castiel’s face. “Yeah? What, you’ve got no mirrors? How can you possibly look at me and think I look good? Considering...what you look like!”

Sam scowled, and ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I’ve been drinking, and I didn’t shower after my run, and these are old clothes-”

The brightest laugh he had ever heard from this quiet man burst out of him. “You think you don’t look good? Sam, you’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met! I try not to even look at you, because I don’t want to freak you out!”

What was happening right now?

“You think I’m smart?”

“You are,” he mumbled.

“Of course I am, but do you know how nervous I get whenever you’re in a conversation? When you argue a point, I feel like I’m up against a professor! I turn every conversation back to science because it’s the only topic I feel like I have an edge over you, and only just because I’ve taken courses you haven’t! You’re the only non-science major I’ve ever known who can keep up with me when I talk about physics! It’s intimidating as hell!”

Sam let loose a peal of laughter. “I was just thinking the same thing about you! That you’re intimidating because I know how much smarter than me you are!”

“I’m not,” Castiel breathed. “I’ve studied different things, so I understand them better. But I really think there’s nothing you couldn’t understand once it was explained to you. Do you remember the time, not long after we first met, when I offered to draw you a diagram explaining a formula for-”

“Wait. That’s the first time I can ever remember you speaking directly to me when we’re all hanging out talking, and I thought that was you mocking me for not understanding!”

The blue gaze stared. “Mocking you...Sam, I could never...Have you thought I’m an ass all this time?”

“You have an amazing ass.”

Castiel’s eyes widened.

Sam slapped his forehead. “God, why am I so drunk?” he wailed. 

“Sam? Kevin and Andy will be back any minute. I can’t remember us ever being alone before now. And I want to know. Why do you stare at me?” Hope was lovely in that handsome face, under all that dark, gorgeous hair…

He sighed in surrender. He would have to call Dean and tell him how he had humiliated himself completely, but he may as well finish this. “Because I want you to see me,” he breathed. “Because I want to get your attention somehow, and I don’t know what to do. Because I’m an awkward, shy mess from rural Kansas, and you’re a beautiful, brilliant, confident man with no interest in me whatsoever. Because you’re interesting, and I’m not. Because you’re going to be somebody, and I’m struggling just to keep my scholarships. Because you’re a freaking physics major, but you wander by to fix my genius roommate’s computer science program, and talk philosophy with our genius stoner buddy, and school my ass in natural history and science just because you can. Because I know a guy like you can have whatever he wants, and I know a guy like me has nothing to offer, and I still want to offer you whatever I am anyway. That’s why I stare at you, Cas. Because I don’t want to miss anything you do. Even if you’ll never notice me.”

They were already standing so close, but that smile inched closer now, and Sam realized too late that Castiel was lifting himself onto his toes. “I see you,” Castiel whispered finally, and his lips pressed into Sam’s. 

It was such a gentle, non-insistent kiss, just touching, that Sam’s frantic mind burst with anxiety trying to analyze it, even as his heart yanked him forward to follow Castiel’s lips as they moved out of reach. It tipped him off balance, and he stumbled a step forward before catching himself. 

Castiel sighed happily. He had stepped back, but it seemed that was only so that he could read Sam’s face for his reaction. “Whatever you want to offer, Sam, I promise it’s what I want. And if you still want to offer it when you’re sobered up, that’ll make this the best night of my life. So let me know. I’ll be right down the hall, and I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

Sam couldn’t take a full breath. But he nodded. “A shower,” he squeaked. “It’ll help.”

A glint of humor sparked in those intelligent eyes. “I’ll be waiting for you. No matter how long it takes.” He lifted himself to kiss Sam again, and this time let it linger an extra second before turning and letting himself out of the room. 

He was still staring at the door when Kevin and Andy barreled back in. 

“Sam! Help me convince Kevin he doesn’t need more coffee!”

Without tearing his eyes away from his destination, Sam snatched the coffee from his roommate’s hand. “Trust me. I need this more than you do.”

Kevin scowled up at him. “Cas find my error or what?” He looked down at his laptop. “Ah! He did!”

Andy’s eyes were on Sam. “What’d we miss while we were out?”

Sam took a long, shuddered breath. “He noticed me,” he sighed. 

His friend’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t pay any attention. 

Coffee, a shower, and plenty of water was all that stood between him and the man he adored. Failing out of Stanford seemed ridiculous suddenly. Failing at anything seemed to be out of the question. Castiel had noticed him, and was leaving the door unlocked for him. The whole future was looking more like a beautiful adventure every moment.


End file.
